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“Your hair is so greasy,” Dream says admiringly.
“Thanks,” Evan says. His voice, as always, is depressingly muffled – like it’s been stepped on and squashed by the saddest boot in the world. “I haven’t gotten to wash it in a little while. Or cut it. I don’t really, um, keep scissors—”
“Long hair is better anyways,” Dream says. She runs her fingers through Evan’s hair and feels Evan twitch. She imagines the darkness spilling from her fingertips and twining itself through Evan’s hair, turning into something totally bitching and evil. Like snakes. Dark, evil snakes.
“You’ve never used Manic Panic?” she says.
Evan shakes his head mutely.
“Oh my god. Okay. Okay. And you’ve never, like, done guyliner before.”
“I don’t really understand why you’re gendering eyeliner. That seems like something that doesn’t need to be gendered.”
Dream doesn’t listen. She has already pulled out her makeup case and is picking colors to match his skin tone; Evan’s skin is sallow, almost green in the places where veins stand out. There are a lot of veins. It doesn’t seem like a normal amount of veins. She’s so jealous.
“Eyeliner then,” she says. “Whatever. Okay. You’re naturally super pale so I’m just going to use a little bit of foundation to get, like…the proper aesthetic. The vibe. The vampiric energy. Like, it’s…okay if I touch your face, right?”
“I,” Evan says. “Yeah.” His voice cracks on the word yeah.
“This is the best day of my life,” Dream breathes, and sets to work. Evan’s eyes close automatically as she starts putting foundation on; she watches the queasy fluttering of his eyelashes. He’s gnawing the skin off of his lower lip. She blends down onto his neck, where his throat is working. It’s very quiet.
She jumps when he says: “Me too.”
“What?”
Evan’s eyes snap open. “I, uh. This is the best day of my life. Is it weird that I said that? I don’t know – I don’t know how to do any of this. I mean, magic, obviously, obviously I don’t know how to do magic, and we don’t need to unpack that at all. But like, friendship. And makeovers. So it’s just, it’s really cool that you’re doing this. For me. Is all I meant by that. I’m going to close my eyes again.” He closes his eyes again.
Dream looks down at her bottle of Manic Panic Dreamtone Flawless White Liquid Foundation®. She feels something in her throat swell up. God, she hopes the feeling is black bile. Please let that feeling actually be black bile. (She knows it isn’t black bile.)
“Well,” Dream says. “I mean. Normally people don’t want to do this. With me, I mean. Either. So. Like, it’s not like I’m all alone, or whatever, or I am, but in a really dark and twisted way – I just. This is cool. Thanks, I guess. Oh my god don’t cry you’re going to smear it!”
“Sorry,” Evan says through his tears. And again: “sorry.” And then a third time: “Sorry,” he says, sounding heartbroken and sincere. It’s awful to listen to. Like a voice made out of bruises.
“You don’t have to apologize,” Dream says, as fast and frantic as she can. “Seriously. It’s okay. This stuff is actually pretty heavy duty. I used it to cosplay for the season finale of – you know what? Never mind. It’s fine. You’re fine. You look very…porcelain. This totally brings the…endless dreamy abyss of your obsidian orbs.”
“You mean…my eyes?”
“You have to develop a sense of drama!”
“I don’t know if I want to do that,” Evan says.
“Okay, well, make that decision after I finish your eye makeup,” Dream says. She huffs out a breath and whips out her eyeshadow palette. (It’s shaped like a heart, but like, the anatomy one.) “I am going fully dramatic on this, I hope you know that.”
“I sort of figured. That’s really your whole vibe.”
“Thanks,” Dream says, delighted despite herself. She begins building a gradient around his left eye, black and purple and a little bit green.
“You make it look really easy,” Evan says. “And fun. I guess. I don’t know. It’s cool, when you talk about it. Darkness. You make it sound cool.”
“It is cool.”
“Uh, just from my personal experience? It definitely isn’t.”
“We just have to get you some better experiences!”
Evan’s eyes snap open, and Dream fumbles her makeup brush and drops it on the ground. The ring of makeup around his left eye is like the halo of light in a solar eclipse: too bright, not bright enough. The darkness of his irises is unbearable. Small red veins wriggle and burst in the whites of his eyes.
“There aren’t going to be any,” Evan whispers. His voice reverberates, hisses, echoes. “There will never be anything good. Only this. Forever and ever and ever and ever—”
Dream boops his nose.
“Agh,” Evan says, and blinks, and his eyes are normal again. Even a little silly. The eyeshadow around one eye looks like a cartoon bruise.
“You did it again,” Dream says.
“Gosh,” Evan says. He wipes the palms of his hands off on his jeans. “It really does – do that! I really do that. Sorry. Did I mess up the, uh, the…makeup?”
“Nope!” (She pops the p.)
“Cool. Cool cool cool.” Evan closes his eyes again, and Dream goes back to blending the gradient together. She leans back, appraises it. Yep: it’s extremely cool. She nods to herself in satisfaction and goes to polish it off.
“So, uh,” she says, “what was…your…Hogwarts house? When you were a kid?”
“Dream.”
“I’m just saying, like, you know Harry Potter, there had to have been a time when you were like – oh, fuck yeah, Gryffindor or whatever. Before all your dreams died and you were like, oh well, guess I’ll just try really hard to be normal forever!”
“No,” Evan says tightly. “No, there wasn’t really – a time. Like that. I didn’t get one of those.”
“So you never took the Pottermore quiz. Online.”
“I try not to get too close to screens.”
“Well,” Dream says, “lucky for you, I memorized the Pottermore quiz. I mean, if you want to take it. Like, it’s sort of pointless now, since we’re basically in Hogwarts except it sucks more, and also because like…J.K. Rowling…”
“Fuck TERFs.”
“Fuck TERFs! And then it’s like, how do you separate the art from the artist? And then it’s like, god, the house biases are kind of shitty! Like what you said before about these houses. So, I – it was stupid that I brought it up in the first place, right? But I mean. I don’t know. I…”
There has to be a cool way to say it, to tell Evan you should be allowed to have this – where this is midnight release parties and trips to Hot Topic and Hogwarts pins on your backpack and big ugly scarves in all the right colors and arguing about Hufflepuff and breaking up your Gryffindor-Slytherin friendships in a huff only to immediately become friends again. Somewhere out there is a cool way to wrap all of these things up and give them to Evan in a way that lets him actually reach out and take them – but Dream doesn’t know that way. She only knows the exact wording of the Pottermore questions and answers, and she only knows those because she had to memorize the answers that would give her Slytherin. Otherwise she always got—
“Yeah,” Evan says, sounding tired. “I mean, sure. Give me the Pottermore quiz.”
“You don’t have to,” Dream says. “If you don’t want to. Like I said, it’s totally stupid.”
Evan’s right eye opens a crack. As soon as she notices that, it closes again.
“No,” Evan says. “I’d like to hear it. Maybe it won’t give me the evil house if y—” he coughs and goes quiet. Curses? Slimes? Black ichor? Dream waits excitedly but nothing comes out of his throat. Probably just feelings. Ugh.
“Okay,” Dream says. “Okay. Dawn or dusk?”
“That seems pretty arbitrary.”
“Yeah, the quiz is kind of limited. Like, obviously dawn is the good answer and dusk is the evil answer. It’s not like crime ever happens in the daytime or anything!”
“Evil people are nocturnal. Like bats. And, like bats, they only come out at night to avoid competition with omnivorous birds.”
“Oh yeah. Bird crimes.”
“Bird crimes,” Evan agrees. A smile is tugging at the corner of his mouth, pulling at his bitten lips.
“So scrap that question,” Dream says. “It’s not even a hundred percent that that’s going to be your first question anyways. You could also get…moon or stars?”
“Hey! That’s better! Still super arbitrary, but less binary.”
“Exactly!”
“Uh…I don’t know, I haven’t really thought about this. I guess the moon. If I had to choose.”
“Okay,” Dream says. She finishes dusting metallic powder over Evan’s left eyelid. “I’m doing your other eye now, by the way.”
“Cool,” Evan says. She goes to work on his other eye.
“So the second question is—” (don’t do the one about name calling, don’t do the one about death, be careful, he’s fragile) “—how would you like to be known to history? Wise, good, great, or bold?”
“Good,” Evan says, before she’s even finished the question.
“Quick answer,” Dream says, trying not to be deeply deeply sad about it. “Nice. Uh, question three is really long, it’s basically which smell is the most comforting? A is fresh parchment, B is a roaring fire, C is the ocean, D is home.”
“Ha!” Evan says. “Another vague one. What does home even smell like.”
Easy: her mother’s perfume, the takeout from that place around the corner, the vague plasticky smell her computer makes when it’s getting too hot. The thought comes instantly, like snapping her fingers, and then Dream looks at Evan and sees the tenuous smile that’s still hanging around his mouth from when he got to say a fact about bats and she imagines that smile falling to the floor and cracking in half and the air getting heavy again, and dark, and blood snakes unfurling themselves from Evan’s eyes, and Dream vomiting blood everywhere, but worse than all of that the way Evan wouldn’t be smiling anymore. The muscles of his mouth would fall back into frowning so easily. They probably don’t remember how to do anything else.
“I don’t know!” Dream shouts, panicked, and then manages to rein her voice in. “I mean. You’ve never sniffed a house, Evan?”
“Oh. Is that one of those things that I was supposed to – like, my phone should have a screen, houses should have a smell—”
“No,” Dream says. “I was joking. It was a joke.”
“Oh,” Evan says again, and there: the smile comes back. His whole mouth is smiling; his eyes are closed. Tears bead on his bottom eyelashes. He’s pretty when he smiles. He’s pretty the rest of the time too – he has the whole brooding prettyboy thing down without even trying, which is frustrating and hot in equal measures – but it’s just, when he smiles, it’s. Whatever! It’s whatever.
“You’re crying again,” Dream says helplessly.
“Sorry,” Evan says, again. He goes to wipe his face with his T-shirt and then remembers the foundation and stops. “Haha,” he says. His eyes are still closed; he’s still crying a little bit. “I don’t really get to be in on jokes. That much. So I – mm! I. I’m obviously not going to pick the house smell, because that’s stupid. So I guess…parchment. Parchment just reminds me of here, which is…you know. What’s the question after that?”
I know! Dream thinks. I do know!
“The next question is…you have to fight a troll. So you can cross a bridge. And, like, you and your friends are all there, but the troll is only going to fight one of you. Do you A, try and confuse the troll into letting you pass without fighting? B, draw straws to see which one of you will fight the troll? C, gang up on the troll? Or D, volunteer to fight it in single combat.”
“E. Leave the bridge. I’m assuming the troll is holding a trial by combat in order to determine who’s even strong enough to confront the perils beyond the bridge, and if there are incomprehensible perils beyond the bridge, why am I going over there?”
“I don’t know! There’s just something really important over there!”
“Man. No offense, Dream, this quiz sucks.”
“Look, I know that. But it’s the sacred texts! So you gotta pick a letter. Think about it while I sharpen this eyeliner pencil.”
“Wait, there’s an actual pencil? You’re going to stick a pencil in my eye?”
“Against your eye. And it’s fine, I’ve done this like a million times. I’m not gonna stab you in the eye, Evan.”
“Okay,” Evan says. His voice is small and soft; he clears his throat, keeps talking. “I mean, I’d want to reason with the troll, which I guess within the parameters of the quiz means A, I want to confuse it into letting me pass without fighting.”
“Unionize the trolls!”
“Yes! I just think their work would be more fulfilling and equitable if—”
“Open your eyes,” Dream says, and he does. The words crumble apart in his mouth, as he looks at her, until he’s saying nonsense syllables and then nothing.
“Cool,” Dream says. She can feel her face heating up a little. He really is just staring at her. “Hold still. I promise I’m not going to hurt you, okay?”
“Okay,” Evan says again. He holds very still and she brings the eyeliner pencil to his waterline.
“Okay,” Dream whispers back. She feels like she has to whisper, now that Evan’s eyes are open. “Fifth question. A troll is breaking into the headmistress’ office—”
“Why are all of these questions troll-based?” Evan murmurs.
“Easy targets?”
“Man,” Evan whispers. “Fuck that. But sorry to interrupt. There’s a troll.”
“There’s a troll,” Dream whispers. “Look up for me?”
He looks up. She keeps talking, still keeping her voice in a low hush for reasons she doesn’t quite understand. “There’s a troll,” she says. “It’s about to wreck shit in the headmistress’ office. There’s three things you have to save: a list of student records going back like a million years, an almost-finished cure for dragon pox, and a book of mysterious runes. What order do you save them in?”
“Cure,” Evan says immediately. “Student records. Runes. I still think we should talk to the troll.”
“What if we aren’t even allowed to talk to trolls here. What if it gets us, like, another demerit.”
“Fuck demerits.”
“Fuck demerits.” When they hiss it at this volume, it sounds like a sacrosanct chant that you’d whisper at midnight with your coven. It’s awesome. “Next question, and I’m gonna need you to work with me on this one. Which would you rather study? Centaurs, goblins, merpeople, ghosts – vampires—” She can’t hold it together; she has to put the pencil down and breathe. “Okay, vampires—” Fuck. “Vampires—” Fuck. “Vampires, werewolves, or.” A snort comes out; she covers her face with her hands. “Or trolls,” she says through her fingers, and bursts into laughter.
“Fucking trolls again! Are you serious?! What is this woman’s obsession with trolls—”
“I don’t know,” Dream hiccups, “I honestly didn’t even notice it until you pointed it out—”
“Not to mention that this all seems super rude, like, wow, way to completely other every culture that’s different from yours, which of these creatures would you like to study, okay, there’s literally a mermaid at this school—”
Dream can’t stop laughing. “There’s – literally – a mermaid!”
“Well obviously trolls! Obviously I’m going to study trolls, so I can become a fucking trolls’ rights activist, because it is completely fucking insane how much of a bias there is against trolls. In this quiz. Dream, are you good? You’re still laughing.”
“I’m fine,” Dream wheezes. “I’m fine. Fuck.” She wipes a tear away from her eye. “You’d be a really good trolls’ rights activist, Evan.”
“Thank you,” Evan says. She risks a glance at him – he’s still smiling. His eyes are all crinkled up and he looks very satisfied. There’s more stuff in her throat, but this time it’s probably bile. For sure. This time for sure.
“Um,” she says.
“Oh, you totally aren’t good.”
“No I’m fine! I’m good! I’m going to finish your guyliner! Eyeliner! Fuck!” She throws her hands up into the air and then grabs for her eyeliner pencil again. “And I am not! Going! To stab you!”
“I’m gonna level with you, Dream: the more you say that, the weirder it sounds.”
“Shut up and tell me what kind of cat you want.” Dream moves to his other eye and goes to work.
“What?” Evan says. “Seriously? That’s a question? What kind of cat you want?”
“Or toad, or owl.”
“Okay, well, we saw how well that worked out, so I’m going to say none of them. Can I say none of them?”
“No!”
“I…man, I don’t know. A toad? I guess? Toads are cool.”
“So what kind of toad.”
“I’ve really only had experience with Anaxyrus americanus, but that has American in the name, so like, would it even be able to survive over here? The weather is way different. I can’t imagine the environment would be good for it, and then there’s like, the question of introducing an invasive species—”
“Evan, I’m just gonna say common toad.”
“Yeah, that’s fair.”
“So that means…final question!”
“Oh. Already?”
His gaze flicks over to her and then back up again. She tries not to pay attention to it; she tries to avoid noticing things, like his eyes, like the way his eyelashes tremble. Like the pimple on his right cheekbone. Like his mouth, his chewed lips. Stuff like that.
“Yeah,” she says. “So. Heads or tails?”
“Wow. That’s it? That’s what decides the rest of my wizarding life? A literal coin flip?”
“A literal coin flip.”
Evan starts chewing on his lip again. Finally, he says: “Heads.”
“Heads,” Dream says. She leans back. Frowns at his eyes. The eyeliner kicks ass, if she does say so herself. The eyeshadow is also great. Maleficent-esque, if Maleficent was a teenage boy who already had worry lines permanently carved into his forehead.
They’re furrowing now. “Oh, wait,” Evan says. “Is that – are you done with that too? Is this – over? Is it done?”
“No!” Dream says. “I mean. Not yet. I’m still definitely going to dye your hair. And the makeup isn’t done, obviously. I still have to do your lipstick.”
“You’re…doing lipstick?”
“Of course I’m giving you lipstick! How could I not give you lipstick! Let me just get it, Evan.” She fumbles into her makeup bag – past Cursed Black, past Alien Black, past Black Out and Black Goat and Hell’s Bells and Void. She pulls out Midnight.
“Okay,” she says pointlessly. She holds Evan’s chin in one hand and the lipstick in the other. “Okay,” she says again, and starts putting it on his lips.
“You can chew this,” she says. “You bite your lips a lot. I mean. You – you probably shouldn’t eat it, but you aren’t gonna die if you eat it. You bite your lips a lot. Did I say that?” And the words keep spilling out of her, plopping all around them as she outlines Evan’s lips in black and fills them in soft. She can feel him looking at her – still looking at her. There is a question in his eyes that she doesn’t want to answer.
Eventually, she runs out of words; she does the rest of it in silence, and then it’s done. She leans back, studies him. He looks absolutely fucking killer. It’s her best work.
He stares back at her. He asks the question:
“What house did I get?”
But what he means is: who am I?
Being the Sorting Hat must suck. Being the Plinth of Possibilities or whatever its actual name is must suck too – holding the weight of an entire person, too heavy and too fragile, and holding the thousand-pound weight of their question too. Who am I really? Can you tell me? Do you know me? Can you tell me who I am?
Dream would be an awful Sorting Hat. She would just keep saying I don’t know! I don’t even know who I am! Nobody knows! Nobody knows anything! The whole world is fake, and you’re the only thing that’s real!
She clears her throat. “Uh,” she says, “Gryffindor.”
“What? There’s no way I got Gryffindor.”
“Hey! I’m the one who knows the quiz. You got Gryffindor. It was all the troll activism. You’re a hero, Evan.”
“Yeah,” Evan says, “that’s not right.” His eyes wander away, looking at the wall or at infinity. She can see him trying to convince himself of that – that’s not right, that can’t be true – at the same time he tries as hard as he can to believe in it. He wants to believe in it. Dream knows; she wanted to believe in it too. She rigged the stupid fucking quiz until it had no choice but to give her the answer she wanted, and when it gave her the answer she wanted she was so relieved that she cried.
“True,” Dream says. “It’s not right.” When he looks back at her she puts the horns up to her forehead. “You’re in Goat House.”
Evan’s face gets all wobbly. He puts the horns up to his own forehead. “Goat House. Hell yeah.”
“I really need you not to cry though.”
“Oh fuck.” Evan’s hands flutter towards his face and then away again. “Shit. Did I already fuck it up?”
“No,” Dream says, “you’re good.” The words catch in her throat; she says them again. “You’re good, Evan.”
“I’m trying,” Evan says quietly.
“I know,” Dream says. She knows.